Sustainable energy:
The most important scientific challenge we
face today

It’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to
happen overnight, but at least some of the solutions to one of
humanity’s greatest problems may be found at Berkeley Lab.
Somewhere among the Lab’s collaborative blend of biologists,
chemists, materials scientists, physicists, and computer scientists
could lie a way to obtain a sustainable, CO2-neutral source of
energy.

“This is the most important scientific challenge we face
today,” said Lab Director Steve Chu, speaking at a two-day
meeting held at Berkeley Lab in March 2005. The meeting was convened
to map the challenges that must be overcome to efficiently convert
solar energy into fuel or electricity. Deputy Director Graham
Fleming, an international authority on ultrafast processes, including
photosynthesis, organized the meeting, which drew several dozen
scientists from across the Lab and other institutions.

“If we can make solar energy an organic part of our thinking
at the Lab,” Chu said, “we can come up with broad,
coordinated solutions to the energy problem. Scale is crucial
to our success.”

A harrowing list of statistics underscores the need to quickly
wean the world from fossil fuels. Pre-industrial concentration
of atmospheric CO2, a greenhouse gas, was 280 parts per million.
Today, it’s 370 parts per million. Energy production and
use account for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. And, if
that were not enough, world production of oil and gas is predicted
to peak within 10 to 40 years. Although energy conservation and
efficiency can buy some time, fossil fuels won’t last forever.
The clock is ticking.

In April 2005, DOE/BES held a national workshop on basic research needs
for solar energy use. To prepare LBNL with a focused strategy for this
workshop, Lab director Steve Chu convened a 1½ day meeting to
define our goals and determine areas where the Lab has a leading edge
and is likely to make contributions that cannot be equaled elsewhere.
The workshop focused on the challenge of achieving a carbon-neutral
energy solution through the conversion of solar energy into chemical
fuel. This conversion may be through a sequence of solar to electrical
to chemical storage or through a direct solar to chemical path.

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